Walz on governing under Trump: ‘I am not going to enable him’

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

David Weigel: You told [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom that Senate Democrats should have ‘made Trump justify what he’s doing.’ How could they have made that happen?

Tim Walz: I’ve said this on budgets and stuff. I voted, at times when the Republicans needed another vote on the debt ceiling, to get it done. And I voted with George Bush. But I also think that we have to recognize this is so different. I think, as a governor, seeing the disruptions that it’s causing, seeing the system shut down, we can’t get reimbursement — I understood that the argument was, if we did a shutdown, if we fought Trump that way, it would cause pain to people. The pain is already here.

I will try and cooperate with anybody, but I’m not going to compromise on core values, whether it’s human rights or other things. The first time, with Trump, I tried to cultivate a relationship to a certain degree. He even praised me a few times. My idea was to keep my head down, not draw a contrast to Minnesota, and do the best we could. That’s not going to work this time with this guy. It’s not going to work for anybody. It’s certainly not going to work for Minnesota. So I said, I’ll follow the law, but if he issues unlawful orders, we’re not going to do it.

What did Chuck Schumer not do that a different leader could have done?

All of us on this could have had a clearer vision. We knew this [continuing resolution] was coming. I think there could have been, like — what are states doing? We were prepping for a shutdown, right? My team prepares for a shutdown. How do we hold things down? How do we use rainy day funds? What can we do? I think there could have been those conversations amongst us.

And look, I don’t want to question Sen. Schumer. He’s an expert at this. He’s been there a long time. He also, I think, has great compassion for what would happen with the shutdown. What I would say, if there would have been more communication with all of us: That pain is already in the states, and it’s not going to get any better. And I think the issue is, it muddied the water on who’s to blame for this, and it’s clearly Donald Trump.

[Minnesota Sen. Amy] Klobuchar in that leadership — would she have been a better leader, better messenger?

I watched a little bit of Sen. Schumer and I watched [Vermont Sen.] Peter Welch on the talk shows. I think we’re learning from this. What I would tell people is, is that, yes, maybe this one could have gone differently. There will be another opportunity here, after the CR. And I think it behooves us, who care about the American people, to be a little more strategic and organized together on how we approach that.

What I heard from the House and what we were seeing was there was the determination that they were going to stand firm on this, and they were going to make the Republicans get the votes to do it. And then as of Wednesday night, we heard it wasn’t. That was what was probably harder for people.

On not obeying illegal orders from the president — one thing we’ve already seen happen is, there are people who are being rounded up and deported, who have not [been charged with] crimes. They have a tattoo, and an ICE agent says it looks like a Venezuelan gang tattoo. How would you respond if one of those people is deported from Minnesota?

You can’t do that. You can’t deport someone for that. I see [Trump border czar] Tom Homan act like that doesn’t matter? We follow the courts. If you think they’ve done something, put them in front of the court. It can be adjudicated, and you do what’s necessary. In this twisted world, they’re trying to say that we don’t want violent criminals to be deported. We certainly do. But we certainly don’t want someone who’s a legal resident or someone who’s not caught up in this, like tourists. We have to stand up to it. We’re seeing that right now. The courts are shutting him down. It’s pretty unprecedented for Chief Justice [John] Roberts to weigh in like he did. I think he’s seeing it like we’re seeing it.

By providing the votes for the Laken Riley Act, did Democrats enable any of what’s happening right now?

I don’t know. That one, I’m not going to second-guess. I took those hard votes in Congress, and each one’s a little bit different. I do think we probably need to be a little more macro on how all these things are fitting together. I’m more in the camp of, I’m not going to enable him to do the horrible things he’s doing. If there’s things that follow the law, like I said — if they ask us for data they always can get, and it follows the law, we’ll do that. But if they ask for things that are protected, or he doesn’t have the authority to get, we’re not going to give them to him.

And I think we should be clear on that. That’s a line. I am not going to enable him to do the damage he’s doing. Someone asked me, well, do you agree with him on anything? What is he doing right now that I would agree with? He’s undermining education, health care, rule of law. I have no responsibility to work with that. If he comes back and says, ‘Look, I want to help with these grain embargoes,’ you know, whatever’s going on with his trade wars, I’ll give him advice on that, what we need to do, but that’s not working.

Has he asked your advice on that?

No, nothing. I don’t know if he’s asked any Democratic governors, but we know a lot about this, and I have really good relationships — I would argue, better than he does — with the Canadian premiers, who we’ve worked with on Great Lakes issues, on trade issues. We have conversations more frequently. And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what we think. He sees us as the enemy, not as governors of states that Republicans thought, at least until recently, should have had a lot of autonomy and rights. Not anymore.

You’re going to talk here about Elon Musk spending millions of dollars on this court race. How does that elevate the importance of Democrats holding onto the seat?

This is the litmus test. This is the test rocket going up. And if he’s successful here, I fully expect it everywhere, whether it’s with voter ID, or with [Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate] Brad Schimel, who is there to do Donald Trump’s bidding. We in Minnesota have independent judicial selection boards who send me three qualified candidates, who I don’t even know. I interview them, and we pick them, and we have a judiciary that is trusted. We had a staunchly Republican Supreme Court Justice who defended that judiciary. She and I didn’t agree on a lot, but we defended the judiciary. And I feel like, if [Schimel] is successful here, states that have that will be under threat. He, in his mind, does not see that they are co-equal branches to be the checks and balances. And if they are, he says, ‘I will just simply buy that branch as well.’

The other argument Republicans are making here is, vote for Brad Schimel to support Donald Trump. That’s in the mail from Elon’s PAC. [Former Wisconsin Gov.] Scott Walker said last night, if you’re frustrated about these judges overruling Trump, vote for Schimel. What’s the implication of that?

Oh my God, that’s it. That’s the country. That’s the republic. That’s everything. I think you see the unprecedented statements by Chief Justice Roberts because he recognizes that’s the game. You cannot have this. There have been really rough decisions that went against me. I’d have to say, ‘I disagree with the decision, but I fully respect it, and my administration will fully implement it, according to what the judge has said.’ You can’t even question that. I mean, you can go and scream behind closed doors that you disagree with them, but you cannot cross that line. And I think they have smashed the line.

You’ve been on ballots when Trump was on there and when Trump wasn’t on there. One thing Republicans are trying to do right now is get Trump voters excited, and [get them to] see this election as a way to support him. In your experience, does that work?

Well, 2022 looked good for us, and 2018 looked good for us. I would argue that Donald Trump continues to lose special elections. We had the highest turnout in a state senate special election in the history of Minnesota, which is either [No. 1 or No. 2] in voter turnout all the time. Fifty percent of registered voters on a Tuesday in March for a special election that was totally uncontested. Yep, that’s something. Donald Trump not being on the ballot makes it very, very difficult to get his people out. That’s my hope, that it holds true here. And I think that’s the purpose of these rallies.

How much can Democrats can rebuild, of what Trump is un-building right now? We’ve seen cases where employees are laid off, a court orders them back, but they’re still laid off. Do Democrats run in 2028 on re-establishing it?

I use the analogy of the car running out of gas. Car runs out of gas, you go get a can, you pour some in, you start it up, and it’s all fine. This is the car running out of oil, and it’s broken. And what I’m saying is, he is breaking it. This is a little bit in the Ezra Klein space: Democrats need to acknowledge that not all these agencies work perfectly. All of us who teach would agree to that. You know, we say how important the Department of Education is, how it does incredible work, but we would all argue there’s ways they could be better.

I think we need to start messaging right now. We need to put our experts on this. How will we build back next time? I think it’s an opportunity. I think it’s an opportunity to create the agencies the way we saw them in the first place, functioning better, without all the barnacles. So, Trump might be doing us a favor. He stripped it down, he blew the motor up. We’re going to put a new motor in it and take off. And I think that’s how we have to start thinking about it.

So if Republicans shrink the Department of Education down to nothing, Democrats say: OK, we’ll build a better Department of Education?

We come back and we rebuild that because it’s critically important for access to education, and some of the research that’s being done there. Now, I am with Ezra on this, and I see it in the state government. We mean well, but over time it just gets too unwieldy. We did something really bold in Minnesota; they’ve been talking about it for decades. My department of human services was just so big, and we split it. We put children, youth and family in one group, and we moved it, because we were dealing with sex offenders and child nutrition in the same department. It was too big, it was too unruly, it was too inefficient. We blew it apart and got that opportunity. I think that’s how we approach this.

There’s a campaign by Ben Shapiro, and some other conservatives, to get Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin. What would happen in Minnesota if Trump did that?

It would undermine the faith in the system. This was a man who murdered George Floyd on TV. He was prosecuted. If he got pardoned, Derek Chauvin would come back and do 22 and a half years in a Minnesota state prison. If he wants to come and stay in Stillwater, we will certainly take him coming back to Stillwater. But he’s not walking free, whether he gets pardoned by Trump or not.

What do you think is motivating this effort to get him pardoned?

Racism. It’s racist. OK? That’s what I believe.

One of the premises of this Republican campaign for the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court is that the Trump vote can come out for someone who’s not Trump. Looking ahead: Could JD Vance do it? How much of this Trump coalition do you think he can hold on to?

I don’t know. I think there’s something unique about Trump. Look, the people bought what he was selling. He seems to have a way to do this. He’s entertaining, or whatever. I’m not sure that there’s someone else who does that. Does that somebody else hold his 77 million voters? Probably. Does that person then alienate people, or not do enough, when all those other voters come out to beat him? Because you could easily bury them. I keep telling people, I don’t think you should be hoping that we get a charismatic Barack Obama [to] roll into the scene and get us out of this. I think it’s these things, these town halls, that does it.